Politics Is Uncivil

Has all political decorum, all spirit of civility abandoned our government?
It's a question that has been incessantly posed since the earliest days
of the republic, when George Washington worried that the "ill-founded jealousies and false alarms" of partisanship would wound the young nation's politics. The latest people to muse on the topic are ABC News
correspondents Jonathan Karl and Gregory Simmons, who wonder if political civility has "reached a new low" in the halls of government.

While
the bulk of their article consists of salacious bits of anecdote
(notably when Al Franken is called out for muttering under his breath at
Mitch McConnell speech, and, of course, when Dick Cheney tells Patrick
Leahy to F*** himself), the most interesting tidbit the article dredges
up comes from the stark results of the Civility Project:

Seeking
to restore [decorum], the bipartisan Civility Project sent letters to
every member of Congress and each governor -- 535 in all -- asking them
to sign a pledge to be civil. Two months later, only one, Rep. Frank
Wolf (R-Va.) has agreed.

Those results may not be
comforting to those hoping to temper pervasive partisan rancor, but they
are, at least, further evidence that online petitions are extremely ineffective.